Resum:

It was estimated the predominance of depression and its relationship with thefactor risks already known in a sample of 180 elderly people staying at Care Homes, all ofthem with more than 50 years old, distributed in 2 groups.These groups are: Group I (elderly accompanied by the family), Group II (elderlynot accompanied by the family), for that it was used a geriatric depression scale (Yesavageet al., 1983), to identify whether they had depression or not.One has concluded that there was a high depression rate (63,3%), of which 74,4%were women, whereas men manifested only a 25,6% rate of depression.One could also verify that the distribution of the elderly by categories such asmarital status is not identical, 30% of the elderly accompanied by the family are married,whilst within the elderly who are not accompanied by the family, prevail those who arewidowers (55,6%) and those who are single (28,9%), fact which brings to what wasexpected, the elderly who are not accompanied by the family present a depression rate of63,3%, much higher than the group of the elderly accompanied by the family (36,7%). Toconfirm ones expectations, 64,9% of the elderly with no depression are accompanied bythe family.Fact that caused some surprise was the variable “number of children “in whichthe depression diagnosis is independent of the number of children (value-p=0,434), theelderly depression percentage is similar for the 2 groups no matter the number of childrenthat are considered, the differences observed are not statistically significant.Due to that it is suggested a wide-ranging case-study, to better understand therelationship between the depression by lack of familiar accompanying and the high rate ofdepression in institutionalized elderly people.Key-words: Elderly people, depression, institutionalization, familiar accompanying, risk factors.